


Collector

by etlillium



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, I think this is what a character study is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:07:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27686030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etlillium/pseuds/etlillium
Summary: Eventually, Kara Danvers met Lena Luthor.Kara wouldn’t be able to explain it, not to anyone, couldn’t put a name to the feeling.Kara knew she had to know Lena Luthor.It was like a universal pull, she had no idea why people weren’t flocking to the woman, there was a sense of urgency, need, when she was around Lena that told her to get closer, learn more, be there.Or, Kara Danvers collects things, and Lena is one of them.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 4
Kudos: 251





	Collector

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this real quick and havent re read it, I also don't watch this show but Im in love with them both so if it sucks dont tell me

Kara Danvers had a curious knack for collecting things.

It started nearly as soon as she joined the Danvers in their home.

Krypton had been destroyed, her pod knocked off course, crash landed on earth, with an unfamiliar baby cousin much too grown up and with even less familiar surroundings, unfamiliar powers, family, school, even the sun wasn’t like hers.

Unfamiliar Danvers family home. 

So she picked up a little red rock, one by the stairs leading to the front door where these Danvers were standing, two beaming smiles and a deep scowl. She slipped it into her pocket, this smooth red rock - no bigger than a quarter and the most familiar thing around her.

This carried on for a while, she collected things.

It started as things that reminded her of home, because there were so few things here that were like that. Nothing was the same here as they were on Krypton. Everything had been turned on an axis, except the little things she could slip into her pocket. A little red rock, that bit of rusty metal, the piece of machinery in Jeremiah’s office that he pretended not to notice went missing, a piece of cloth.

Her collection grew, as did her familiarity. She got to know a whole new language, she got to know who _Superman_ was, she got to know her new family. She slowly but surely was getting to know Alex.

There was a day that Alex found her little (not so little) collection of things. Kara had taken to storing them in a neat line under her bed. Just inside, so you couldn’t see them when you walked in, but not strewn under like they were unloved.

It was a day Kara had found an old photo in her classroom, shoved right down at the bottom of a drawer, and the woman looked just like her mother, so she hadn’t given it a thought, just shoved it into the pocket of her jeans and taken it home with her. It hadn’t occurred to her that maybe she shouldn’t have taken it, but it looked just like her, and the few memories she had of her mother were fading and she so desperately wanted to take hold of something, anything, and just never let go.

Then, Alex noticed her crawling under the bed and questioned her.

It was the tone of her voice really, Alex’s question was so demanding and Kara hadn’t known how to react. So she replied a stuttered lie and Alex didn’t believe her, no one would have, and demanded she know what Kara was really doing.

Kara took a big gulp and knew that guilt had clouded her face, butterflies in her stomach, the idea of being found out was totally awful - and she had no idea why. It wasn’t like she had stolen.All of these things were unloved, left behind, just the end bits or something that had fallen off. 

Perhaps just like her. 

So Alex got more curious, peered and reached under her bed, while Kara sat back and watched her discover this secret she’d kept, these things she’d collected.

Eventually, Alex had discovered that these things helped her remember Krypton, and with a softly spoken voice, had asked to know all about it. 

Kara told her, and their sisterhood developed, their friendship, and Kara’s connection to this new earth, this home, family, sister, life.

Then she grew up a little, and began collecting even more.

Rocks that had reminded her of Krypton became crystals, from the beach, from some hippie store when they went on holiday. Crystals never broke so easily under her touch. She had spent a small fortune on old photos, they’d be dated back to the 1800’s, and Kara adored how people looked in their strange clothes. Kara kept the photos in an old shoe box - now bursting out of the seams. 

When she was sixteen, she brought home a bird with a broken wing. Much to Eliza’s dismay, but she nursed it back to health, set it free in a few weeks, and the delicate creature would come back now and again. Kara would ignore Alex telling her it’s a different bird, she knew it was the same one.

At 18, she made friends with a boy called Winn, a strange boy with a big heart and a big brain. Didn’t fit in anywhere, just like her. Two strange bits of a puzzle, so she collected him up and brought him home, he would eat with their little family, spend more time at their house than at his own, and no one ever questioned it, because no one needed to. 

She turned 21 and found a dog on her way from the gym to her apartment on campus. Grey around the nose, skinny as ever and with big brown eyes that just looked desperate, hungry, lost, and familiar. Kara had no choice but to take him to her apartment, feed him all the food in her fridge and freezer, hide him from her roommates because he probably had fleas. 

Kara took him to the vet the next day, all the while growing more fond of him, and more aware she’d never get to keep him. She made sure she didn’t name him. She cried when she said good-bye, even though she was told that the waitlist for pet adoption was so long he’d get adopted in no time.

She didn’t want him to be alone.

It was the first thing she collected that she’d never see again.

Eventually, Kara Danvers met Lena Luthor.

Kara wouldn’t be able to explain it, not to anyone, couldn’t put a name to the feeling.

Kara knew she had to know Lena Luthor.

It was like a universal pull, she had no idea why people weren’t flocking to the woman, there was a sense of urgency, need, when she was around Lena that told her to get closer, learn more, be there.

So she did and she was.

Kara ignored her ever present Luthor name, because she couldn’t care less. Kara invited her to brunches, lunches, to game night, because there was nothing she wanted more than to bring her in, and it was worth the times when Lena would say no - as heart wrenching as that always was.

When Lena finally, finally, started saying yes to the invites out, it was like the sun rained it’s warmth onto Kara and she could just soak it up.

She learned Lena Luthor’s middle name, it’s Keiran and it’s Irish.

She learned that Lena’s adopted too, her mother died in a tragic accident, and the Luthors took her in because Lionel told them too. Then he died.

Kara learned that Lillian hated her, and Lex became someone who was not himself, so Lena was left with nothing but the family name she had never wanted. Lena was on her own, like Kara was too, but without the family to allow her the ability to grow and develop like Lena so entirely deserved. 

It came to no one’s surprise when Kara invited Lena to Thanksgiving, to Christmas, to New Years, to Valentines? (Sure, that was a weird one.)

It came to no one’s surprise, because Lena wasn’t open with anyone else like she was with Kara. Kara knew her ins and her outs, her past and what she wants with the future.  
It came to Kara’s surprise that she had collected and subsequently fallen for Lena.

Of everything she’d collected over the years, they’d been lost, broken, unwanted, unneeded, unloved, the end of-

But she’d collected them anyway, kept them neatly stashed away under her bed to look at, or taken in for them to grow and part ways, or for her to keep and admire when she wanted to.

And yet, when she says this to Lena, in a dramatic laying on our backs in the dark kind of way, it doesn’t come out eloquently, nor should she have expected it too. Calling Lena lost or broken isn’t what she had in mind, but it’s what she’d said. Now Lena has sat up in the bed they’re sharing, turned on the light at her side and is speaking with a furrow in her brow.

“I don’t know if I should be happy or very, very offended with what you just said to me,”

Kara sits up too.

“Okay,” She takes a deep breath, stands and paces around the room, “What I’m saying is that I’ve collected a lot over the years. Things that remind me of home, of Krypton, things that remind me of the Danvers, or things that need to be fixed- No, not fixed, things that just need some more love, things that are lost, or that no one else seems to want. I take them, and I keep them, and I love them.

“I’m one of those things, I lost my place on Krypton and I found another place here. You’re like one of those things too, like me, like a small red rock, like something that I want to- No, you’re something that I do love.

“You’re a lost thing, like me.”

Lena kisses her, searing and solid.

Found and familiar.


End file.
